With dark-leaved evergreens, but at the top
The blue sky spread its canopy, unbarred
By crossing boughs, and in his daily course
From east to west the genial sun would still
Grant it a smile in passing. 'Mid the shrubs
A strong white forest-rose had taken root
(Perchance been planted by a hand mine knew,
Now mouldering-O my heart, thou knowest where !)
And all the stem and lower boughs concealed
Amid the thicker evergreens, its top

Had struggled upwards towards the heaven above
'Gainst obstacles incredible, till now

Far o'er my head, among dark, polished leaves
Of laurel and stiff holly, it outspread

Its clusters exquisite of bud and bloom,

Some yet green-sheathed, some tinted at the heart
With faintest yellow, others shedding down
Their petals white, that lay like pearly shells
Receding waves have left on lonely shores.

GEORGE DARLEY

THE poems of George Darley are among the most curious phenomena of literature. There are surely few as yet unacquainted with him who can read the verses here given as specimens of his work without eagerly desiring to know more of the writer. There are probably none who would not be disappointed with the result of further researches. Darley-the recluse, the poet, the mathematician, living without distraction the ardent life of the spirit—could, as at times in NEPENTHE, breathe forth a strain of such glorious music that one might think it could only have been uttered by a poetic genius of the highest order. But we read on, and the brain becomes exhausted and benumbed. Dazzled and weary, we seek a refuge from the unvarying blaze of

verbal splendour; and there is no refuge but to shut the book. The Celtic intoxication of sounding rhythm and glittering phrase was never better illustrated than by George Darley. Frequently it happens that his verse, though always preserving in some curious way the outward characteristics of fine poetry, becomes a sort of caput mortuum; the glow of life fades out of it. Or, again, it gives us only 'splendours that perplex' and leaves the spirit faint and bewildered. But when, as sometimes happens, spirit and sound, light and life, come together in their miraculous accord and form a living creation of spiritual ecstasy, then indeed we can yield ourselves wholly to the spell of the Celtic enchantment.

won cordial recognition Tennyson offered to pay

George Darley's work of course from his brother-poets of the day. the expenses of publishing his verse; Browning was inspired by SYLVIA; Carey, the translator of Dante, thought that drama the finest poem of the day. But Darley, misanthropic, wayward, and afflicted with an exceptionally painful impediment in his speech which drove him from society in morbid isolation, seems never to have met his peers in wholesome human contact, and lived alone, burying himself in the study of mathematics, of Gaelic, and what not, weaving his rich and strange fancies, apparently indifferent to public approval or criticism, which indeed the public spared him by entirely ignoring him. He was author of several mathematical works said to show remarkable merit and originality.

T. W. ROLLESTON.

George Darley was born in Dublin, 1795; the eldest son of Arthur Darley, of the Scalp, County Wicklow. His family is believed to have come into Ireland with the Ulster Plantation. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1815, and graduated in 1820. In 1822 he settled in London, and in the same year produced his ERROURS OF ECSTACIE (a dialogue with the moon), which was no doubt written in Ireland. Then followed THE LABOURS OF IDLENESS (prose and verse) by Guy Penseval, 1826; SYLVIA, a fairy drama, in 1827; and NEPENTHE, an indescribable rhapsody, in 1839. 1840 and 1841 saw respectively the publication of two tragedies, THOMAS À BECKET and ETHELSTAN, dramas in which the light of poetry plays but fitfully. He died in London in 1846.

A memorial volume of his poems containing several till then unprinted pieces has been published for private circulation by R. and M. J. Livingstone (A. Holden, Church Street, Liverpool).

From NEPENTHE

OVER hills and uplands high

Hurry me, Nymphs! O hurry me!
Where green Earth from azure sky
Seems but one blue step to be;
Where the Sun in wheel of gold
Burnishes deeply in her mould,
And her shining walks uneven
Seem declivities of Heaven.
Come where high Olympus nods,
Ground-sill to the hill of Gods!
Let me through the breathless air
Soar insuperable, where

Audibly in mystic ring

The angel orbs are heard to sing;
And from that bright vantage ground,
Viewing nether heaven profound,
Mark the eagle near the sun
Scorching to gold his pinions dun ;
With fleecy birds of paradise
Upfloating to their native skies;
Or hear the wild swans far below
Faintly whistle as they row

Their course on the transparent tide
That fills the hollow welkin wide.

HYMN TO THE SUN

BEHOLD the world's great wonder,
The Sovereign Star arise!
'Midst Ocean's sweet dead thunder,
Earth's silence and the skies.

The sea's rough slope ascending,
He steps in all his beams,
Each wave beneath him bending

His throne of glory seems.

Of red clouds round and o'er him
His canopy is roll'd,

The broad ooze burns before him,
A field of cloth of gold.

Now strike his proud pavilion!
He mounts the blue sublime,
And throws in many a million

His wealth from clime to clime.

TRUE LOVELINESS 1

IT is not beauty I demand,

A crystal brow, the moon's despair,
Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand,
Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair.

Tell me not of your starry eyes,

Your lips that seem on roses fed,
Your breasts, where Cupid tumbling lies,
Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed.

A bloomy pair of vermeil cheeks,
Like Hebe's in her ruddiest hours,
A breath that softer music speaks
Than summer winds a-wooing flowers,

These are but gauds. Nay, what are lips?
Coral beneath the ocean-stream,
Whose brink, when your adventurer slips,
Full oft he perisheth on them.

And what are cheeks, but ensigns oft

That wave hot youths to fields of blood?
Did Helen's breast, though ne'er so soft,
Do Greece or Ilium any good?

Eyes can with baleful ardour burn ;

Poison can breathe, that erst perfumed;

There's many a white hand holds an urn

With lovers' hearts to dust consumed.

In the first edition of the GOLDEN TREASURY this poem was printed as anonymous among the seventeenth-century writers in Book II.

For crystal brows there's nought within,

They are but empty cells for pride;
He who the Siren's hair would win
Is mostly strangled in the tide.

Give me, instead of beauty's bust,
A tender heart, a loyal mind,
Which with temptation I would trust,
Yet never linked with error find-

One in whose gentle bosom I

Could pour my secret heart of woes,
Like the care-burthened honey-fly
That hides his murmurs in the rose.

My earthly comforter whose love
So indefeasible might be,

That when my spirit wonn'd above,
Hers could not stay for sympathy.

THE FALLEN STAR

A STAR is gone! a star is gone!
There is a blank in Heaven,
One of the cherub choir has done
His airy course this even.

He sat upon the orb of fire

That hung for ages there,
And lent his music to the choir
That haunts the nightly air.

But when his thousand years are passed
With a cherubic sigh

He vanished with his car at last

For even cherubs die!

Hear how his angel-brothers mourn—-
The minstrels of the spheres-
Each chiming sadly in his turn

And dropping splendid tears.